Note 416 — ACTUS IV., SCÆNA 1.

Formerly there were a set of itinerant musicians who used to earn a scanty pittance by going about in winter evenings to taverns and inns, playing for the entertainment of the company they found there. Sir John Hawkins ("History of Music," v. 66) mentions a person who was an excellent performer, and yet submitted to get his living by this practice so late as the year 1735. It is said that some musicians attended the greater inns so constantly that they might in some sort be styled retainers to the houses. A very curious and rare tract, with the title of "The Actors Remonstrance or Complaint for the Silencing of their Profession," 1643, has the following apposite passage:—"Our Musike that was held so delectable and precious that they scorned to come to a Taverne under twenty shillings salary for two houres, now wander with their Instruments under their cloaks, I meane such as haue any, into all houses of good fellowship, saluting every roome where there is company with Will you have any musike, Gentlemen?" Such was one consequence of the severity of Puritan discipline.—Collier. [Hazlitt's "English Drama and Stage," 1869, p. 263.]